Travel in Time and Space
Time Travel The concept of time travel is a difficult one for most people to grasp. Everyone can think of their favorite time-travel movie and think of a million paradoxes that make what happens virtually null and void. In the Quantum Key universe, we try to simplify time travel so the GM can easily shoot from the hip and make fun time travel adventures without having to worry about all the nitty-gritty details. Deviations Traveling back in time and creating any sort of change big enough to cause an alteration to the future causes what is known as a Deviation. This is when an entirely new universe (known as alternate or deviant universes) is spontaneously created. Traveling to the future of this universe will reveal the altered future, and the time traveler will not be able to travel to the original universe or an alternate deviation. The only way to travel back to one's original future is to travel back in time before the deviation was formed and alter whatever caused the deviation. Any attempt to go forward in time within a deviation will only lead further into a deviation, and the only way out is to go back before the deviation occurred. Paradoxes A Paradox is something that cannot happen in time. Such an example of this would be meeting oneself, someone going back in time and killing their own grandfather, etc.. One major paradox is the Recursive or Ontological Paradox: something is responsible for something else, but that something wouldn't exist if not for the something else. For example, a robot travels back in time and is destroyed, but the company that made the robot finds his remains and builds that robot based on the remains. There are two major types of paradoxes: major paradoxes and minor paradoxes. A major paradox is one that creates a wormhole in time which could cause the entire universe to implode, or at least smaller wormholes that could kill or cause severe neurological damage. These normally take place when something that should be completely impossible takes place, such as a person meeting themselves. A minor paradox takes place when something changes time so much that something that currently exists in the current time line would stop existing without destroying it outright... for example, killing a time traveler who is present in the current time frame while he is still a baby, which would make his disappear from existence, or even if the only thing that existed of him in the current time frame were a photograph or any other proof of his existence. Rather than destroying the entire universe like a major paradox, this will just cause things connected to the situation to fade in and out of existence. Temporal Anomalies A temporal anomaly is a type of turbulence in time. These occur when there are paradoxes created in time and space which send out ripples and cause "waves" in the time-space continuum which make time travel rough and rocky. An experienced time traveler will be able to avoid these waves and can use them to discover their originating point. This is how many classic "hero" time travelers find things that have been undone in time and set them right. Some anomalies can actually become sentient if the event in time which created them was terrible enough, such as the death of thousands of people who did not originally die. These can become extremely violent and dangerous. It is theorized that this violence is based on the sudden spiritual release of fear and anger from the victims that caused the anomaly. Category:Campaign Category:Quantum Key